Malden’s Ana Costa takes part in 25th ‘Making Strides’ event

Ana Costa was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003, but prior to her finding out, her sister, Lucy Luis, now 56, was diagnosed with the same deadly disease six years prior.

“We do not have cancer in our family,” Costa, a 51-year-old Malden resident, said.

Years preceding their diagnoses, Costa and Luis had genetic testing, and the results showed that none of their ancestors had breast cancer.

“How can this be,” Costa asked her doctors following her diagnosis, “when we don’t have it [cancer] in the family?”

According to Costa, the doctors explained that the shampoo, toothpaste, lotion, everything Costa uses has chemicals.

“That’s the only answer they could give me,” she said.

The National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) website highlights that “no one knows the exact causes of breast cancer,” and “doctors seldom know why one woman develops breast cancer and another doesn’t.”

The website also adds that “most women who have breast cancer will never be able to pinpoint an exact cause,” and the only known cause of breast cancer is “always caused by damage to a cell's DNA.”

While the causes of breast cancer may not always be known, what is known is ways to help raise money and awareness for the disease. One of the most prominent examples is the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk, which marked its 25th year on Sunday, Oct. 1 at the Hatch Shell in Boston.

The ACS website states that the Making Strides event is a “noncompetitive two-to-five-mile walk” that helps to promote breast cancer awareness and to raise money for the organization in order to fund the research for breast cancer.

According to Theresa Freeman, Director of Communications, Northeast Region, ACS, 25,000 walkers — including breast cancer survivors — participated in the event that raised $2 million. She said that the amount raised is a total of the “donations already received and promised to ACS.”

Freeman has worked for ACS for about a year and a half and she has volunteered for the Non-profit organization for about six years. She explained that the walk is a “great community event that brings people together and lets them know that nobody has to face breast cancer alone.”

“We are all working together,” Freeman said.

Costa, a 14-year breast cancer survivor, and her family, participated in the walk; this year was Costa’s 15th year walking.

“We want to make sure nobody has to go through what my sister and I did,” Costa said.

Costa, who has two daughters and a son, recalled how tough it was for her to get treatment, as no one could stay with her youngest daughter. Her husband, Guido Costa, had to work to support the family financially and to provide medical insurance that was offered through his job. In addition, her closest family members had to work during the weekdays. Costa would always lie on the couch and have her daughter watch cartoons.

“I put my arms around her, so that if she got up to go anywhere I would wake up. I was in that sleepy stage so I was tired and there was nothing I could do,” Costa said.

Freeman said that the money raised funds breast cancer research and also assists in providing “programs and services that help people who currently have breast cancer.”

Costa recalls that years ago, doctors found a lump in Luis’s breast and she was given a 50/50 chance of surviving. After 12 rounds of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation, Luis’s cancer cells were treated.

“But thank God she did well,” Costa said. “She survived.”

Costa recalls that she was diagnosed after spending a year visiting doctors and specialists. At first, Costa got a reaction from her sister’s dog after it scratched her breasts.

‘My nipple had a discharge and I would get stuck to my bra all the time,” she said.

She explained that she immediately asked her doctor why she was reacting this way and he sent her to specialist. The specialist told her that he was not too sure; however, he said that dogs carry germs on their nails and the dog could be the cause.

“A year later, they still weren’t sure,” Costa said.

The specialist gave her an ointment prescription, and he also instructed her not to wet her breast. Even after using the ointment, she experienced an on-and-off reaction, and they would still send her to another specialist to figure out why she had such a reaction.

Finally, she went back to her OBGYN, who performed tests of her discharge and he told her that there could be a 1 percent chance that it was cancer. She went in for a biopsy and test revealed that she had breast cancer. Several weeks later, she had a two-hour surgery.

“They removed half of my breast and the nipples and they removed the milk sacs and all that,” she said.

In addition to the surgery, Costa had six weeks of radiation just to make sure the surgeons didn’t leave cancer cells behind.

The ACS website states that aside from skin cancers, “breast cancer is the most common cancer type in women,” and “the chance that a woman will die from breast cancer is about 1 in 37 (about 2.7 percent).”

The ACS website also stated that “about 63,410 new cases of carcinoma in situ (CIS) will be diagnosed (CIS is non-invasive and is the earliest form of breast cancer).”

Now at the age of 51, Costa hopes that a cure will soon be found, thanks in part to the funds and awareness generated by the Making Strides event.